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google provides qualitative answers. what would be really neat was a search engine that provides quantitative answers or raw data. i'd like to be able to searc

by wayn3 9y ago

google provides qualitative answers. what would be really neat was a search engine that provides quantitative answers or raw data. i'd like to be able to search google for "all the pages that contain a particular javascript snippet", for example. obviously, google has that data. obviously, they dont want to make it available. there are services that offer such things but they suck because their datasets are way too small. on google specifically: the results pages dont matter anymore. nobody clicks anything but the "#1 results" if they click even that. for questions, google very often responds with something like a quora question or some widget of its own, or something else that is really useful - and if its not useful, you try another query instead of clicking through the results pages. results pages are mostly kept for nostalgia it seems.

ljw1001 9y ago
This sounds a lot like Wolfram Alpha, although google does now provide some quantitative results. It works as a calculator and as a units translator for example. that's a good point about only the first few results mattering.
- wayn3 9y ago
  this does not sound like wolframalpha at all. wolframalpha is computer algebra software turned into a web service which allows for searching some papers, pre-written articles and a bunch of interesting, curated numbers. wolframalpha provides qualitative answers to "questions about math". answering the physics problem "whats the speed of light" with "er its fast" is qualitative. saying its 2.99+/- epsilon 10^6 km/s is a quantitative result based on data gathered from some experiment. answering the search engine problem "whats the speed of light" with "2.99+/- epsilon 10^6 km/s" is not a quantitative result. in a search engine contexts, thats just the most likely correct result . qualitative. just a guess. some computer looked at a bunch of data and decided that one of them was probably right based on some popularity heuristic. its like asking an expert who makes an educated guess and claims its right because seniority. a quantitative search engine would be capable of answering questions like "how many sites do X". wolframalpha doesnt do that. its just maple in a browser.
- bloaf 9y ago
  I like WA, but most of the quantitative info is what I'd call "highschool stuff." It is improving all the time, and some of it's math capabilities can reach into advanced undergraduate territory, though. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=IR+spectrum+of+toluene https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=IR+spectrum+of+toluene http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C108883&Units=SI&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=19#IR-SPEC http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C108883&Units=SI&Ty...
futhey 9y ago
Not intended to be a satisfying answer to your question, but publicwww can do that specific task for you, if that is a problem you need solved for yourself.

by wayn3 9y ago

ljw1001 9y ago

This sounds a lot like Wolfram Alpha, although google does now provide some quantitative results. It works as a calculator and as a units translator for example. that's a good point about only the first few results mattering.

wayn3 9y ago
this does not sound like wolframalpha at all. wolframalpha is computer algebra software turned into a web service which allows for searching some papers, pre-written articles and a bunch of interesting, curated numbers. wolframalpha provides qualitative answers to "questions about math". answering the physics problem "whats the speed of light" with "er its fast" is qualitative. saying its 2.99+/- epsilon 10^6 km/s is a quantitative result based on data gathered from some experiment. answering the search engine problem "whats the speed of light" with "2.99+/- epsilon 10^6 km/s" is not a quantitative result. in a search engine contexts, thats just the most likely correct result . qualitative. just a guess. some computer looked at a bunch of data and decided that one of them was probably right based on some popularity heuristic. its like asking an expert who makes an educated guess and claims its right because seniority. a quantitative search engine would be capable of answering questions like "how many sites do X". wolframalpha doesnt do that. its just maple in a browser.
bloaf 9y ago
I like WA, but most of the quantitative info is what I'd call "highschool stuff." It is improving all the time, and some of it's math capabilities can reach into advanced undergraduate territory, though. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=IR+spectrum+of+toluene https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=IR+spectrum+of+toluene http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C108883&Units=SI&Type=IR-SPEC&Index=19#IR-SPEC http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C108883&Units=SI&Ty...

futhey 9y ago

Not intended to be a satisfying answer to your question, but publicwww can do that specific task for you, if that is a problem you need solved for yourself.